


The Taste of Snow

by ClementRage



Category: Final Fantasy 7
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-22 22:41:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6096289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClementRage/pseuds/ClementRage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fic for the Winter Fanworks Competition at TheLifestream.net.</p>
<p>Tifa Lockhart liked snow. Unfortunately, she didn't get to see it often.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Taste of Snow

Ask Tifa Lockhart what she missed about her hometown, and she might, if she liked you and was in a good mood, tell you about snow. The taste of the air, the way it made everything look clean. She had never much minded the cold mountain air, even in the old days before the smell of burning wood made her eyes water. The high passes were made mostly impassable by the deep snows, but if you did find your way into the foothills, there was a great sense of peace that couldn’t be achieved at any other time, with the Nibel wolves not venturing far from their dens and the dragons in deep hibernation (except for Ulfric the Heavy, a nine hundred year old local legend that liked to bury himself in snow and jump out at anything fool enough to venture close to his lair). You could walk for hours without seeing another living thing, and then return to the comfort of your own warm, safe, home.

  
It didn’t snow in the slums. It didn’t even get properly cold, regardless of the storms on the plate that could be seen being crowed over by newsreaders on some few rare occasions, the muggy heat of the slums was barely curbed. There was generally a pile of filthy sludge near some of the bigger gaps between the plate that was shovelled out of the gutters above, but not even the most optimistic children were comfortable in going near it. Not that there were many of those under the plate to begin with. Going plateside just for the weather was a waste of a fake ID, so she typically took out the punching bag and hung it on the eaves of the bar instead.

* * *

 

  
Cloud Strife had never particularly liked snow. He tended to get ganged up on in snowball fights, even when the plan was to mind his own business, and those could hurt more than many people realised. But now, his eyes fixed on that damp trail from the researcher’s boot and stayed there.

  
_So…it’s winter. How long…have I been here?_

  
It was getting harder to think. Some days, he just let his mind drift, only remembering who he was and why he was here when no alternatives presented themselves. Sometimes he thrust the memories aside on purpose, rather than face the pain of the taste of ash in the air. For now, though, he focused his eyes.  
“Fuck it’s cold!”, said the researcher, shedding her coat and shaking out her hair. More snow fell out of the hood. “Stupid little mountain town! Can’t even light a fire in case someone sees and cares, even though everyone in town is on the payroll!” She tried to light a cigarette, failed, and turned on a very small heater in one corner of the labs, blowing on her hands, and continued to rant.

  
“I did not get ninety eight percent in the Shinra entrance exams to feed goldfish! At least Behemoths would do something, I’d get soap opera drama in mating season, clan hierarchies and stuff, but you guys just hang there! I bet it’s warm too! The boss doesn’t mess around with his specimens, oh no, it’s just the employees that have to suffer needlessly!” She drew a bottle out of her sleeve. “Oh well, I’ll find some way to pass the time.”

  
Cloud summoned the strength to try to knock himself out against the glass, and the researcher looked up.

  
“Oh, Goldie, you’re awake! Welcome back! You remember who you are?”

  
Cloud made an effort not to move, nothing she could use. The researcher gave a small smile. “Nice try. So, coherent today?” She dragged over a chair and a clipboard, tilted her head. “So, tell me about your childhood…”

He turned his head away and buried himself in memories.

* * *

 

  
  
Jab. Jab. Cross. Jab. Hook.

  
The punchbag shuddered against the wall of the bar. Barret could use it downstairs, but she needed space to train properly.

  
Footsweep. Ankle Kick. Jab. Jab. Jab.

  
It didn’t stop her missing home. Barret said it worked sometimes, trying to recapture at least one thing he’d once had. More often, it made him sad. Her reasons were different, though. This was not nostalgia. It was preparation.

  
Kick. Kick. Kick. High kick. Elbow. Punch.

  
Training in peace and the taste of snow. They didn’t seem like too much to ask. This was Midgar, after all. The place where dreams came true.

  
Neck-snap. Throat. Heart. Heart. Heart.

* * *

  
  
**Seven years ago…**  
Cloud Strife spat a mouthful of blood and rolled to his feet, catching the second punch and shoving his attacker back. Erda slipped on the loose snow and rolled away, coming up three paces away and ready.

  
Cloud flicked his eyes between the three attackers, but there were no openings there. He’d known this was coming, he’d beat up Geis a few days back for some reason, he couldn’t even remember properly now, although that might have been the blow to the head. But this was Midwinterfest, he hadn’t thought they’d want to miss the festivities to track him down, so he’d come out to train for SOLDIER on his own. Ah well. Spilled milk and all that. He curled and uncurled his hand, something he’d seen on TV once.

  
He caught the first punch on his shoulder, answered it with a solid strike to the ribs. Geis, to his left, (his black eye a pretty yellow-green now), jerked back but instantly threw out a quick kick. Trying to dodge, Cloud fell again, the only upside was that Geis followed him to the ground. He caught the first attempt to kick him while he was down and brought Erda down too, but took a solid kick to the same shoulder as he got up.

  
Sigur was the biggest and strongest of the three, and now he ran directly at Cloud, carrying them both backwards off the bank of snow and onto the ice of the frozen pond, whic h had just enough of a dusting of snow on top that they weren’t seriously injured by the fall. Had he time to think, Cloud might have regretted choosing such a dramatic backdrop to train. Or not. The uncertain footing was the main reason he hadn’t been beaten to a pulp yet. At least none of them were wearing snow spikes.

  
Sigur was advancing on him slowly now, carefully. The pond was not deep enough to drown anyone if the ice broke, but at this time of year falling through even part of the way into the water would hit like being stabbed. The others were occupied climbing down the bank, for the moment.

  
In the end it didn’t help. Sigur spent his summers hauling logs from the foothills, and he didn’t even have the decency to be stupid. They left him on the edge of the ice, the bastards even having the decency to drape a heavy coat over him so he wouldn’t freeze to death.

  
He lay there for a while, waiting for the pain to subside, but just before he was ready to make an attempt to get up a voice cut through his bruises.

  
“You look like you’re having fun.”  
He froze. Of all people he could have wished to find him in this position… They didn’t know each other well, but he could hardly not be recognised by his next door neighbour.

  
“How did you-”

  
“I was on my way to the bonfire, then I followed the blood. You need some help?”

  
He staggered to one knee, fell, then hauled himself upright properly. But he wasn’t going to stay there long without help. “If you, um, don’t mind?”

  
Tifa Lockhart stepped closer, her warm hand touching his face.

  
“You’re frozen! Want to share my coat?”

  
Cloud blinked. “Won’t your Dad rip out my spine?”

  
She smiled. “Only if he finds out.” She undid the clasps of her heavy winter coat with surprising dexterity in the cold, revealing a light, sparkly Midwinter dress underneath.

“Come here.”

  
Cloud was struck dumb. Not at her beauty or kindness, he could never be surprised by her endless capacity for either. But… “ Aren’t you cold? How have you not frozen to death in that?”

  
Tifa blinked. She was used to stammering boys when she dressed up, but that was a new question.

  
“I don’t know. Cold never bothers me much. Dad says I’m half ice giant.” She drew him inside the bulky coat and hooked his arm across her shoulders, bearing the weight without apparent difficulty. He was cold enough that everything else was a secondary consideration, and she radiated warmth inside the coat. Still…

“Won’t I get blood on you?”

  
“Maybe,” she said, not breaking stride. “Now come on, before you faint. Where do you want to go?”

  
“I’ll come with you.” He felt the need to huddle by a bonfire, and they wouldn’t come for him again in front of so many eyes.

  
“Okay. If anyone asks, I beat you up, okay? Zangan says I need to practice fighting people bigger than me, so nobody will be surprised.”

  
Even near paralysis with pain and cold, this was one of the happier memories from his childhood. When it faded into the Mako, there was enough of a sense of loss that he reached out a hand and began to scratch out a message. He lost three fingernails, before he finished, but pain alone had never been enough to stop him from doing what he needed to.

* * *

  
The next snowfall on the plate, she took her normal walk to the edge of the plate. The detour to the train station was mostly an idle whim, the luck of the draw. And there she found a ghost from the past.

She had occasionally wondered what had happened to Cloud, who had chosen to leave at the right time. Had he made SOLDIER? Early on, there had been thoughts of being swept away to live somewhere free of Shinra, on foot of that strange promise she’d wrung from him the night after she’d found him on the pond that midwinter. Later, she’d wondered if someday they’d face each other across a battlefield, in defence of some reactor where they’d find out who was quickest to kill their old friend. He’d featured all too heavily in her ambitions for a former next door neighbour she’d rarely interacted with. But he was from home, and there wasn’t much else from there that she had left.

  
She had not expected to find him like this, an incoherent ghost with unfocused eyes, needle scars trailing across half his body. Well, self medicating was to be expected, she’d seen worse responses to trauma. Although how he’d managed to find out about Nibelheim at all was beyond her, there was no whisper of that in any of the Shinra news, and the casualness with which it was mentioned seemed off for someone that had survived this long unnoticed.

  
She’d brought him back. She’d lost too much of her old life to let this last vestige pass by. There was Johnny, but he obviously wanted nothing to do with the past, he didn’t truly feel the loss the same way. Cloud might not have secrecy down, but he clearly knew and felt the loss of the town. Something to cling to. (Years later, she would reflect that the most heart to heart conversations they had tended to happen when at least one of them had recently been beaten half to death, it took a long time to outgrow that impulse).

It was selfish maybe, to cling to him, but she’d lost too much of her past to want to let go of this last piece. Maybe once they’d decided how to deal with it, they could make other plans. Maybe they’d get to hire a cabin in the mountains somewhere and re learn the taste of snow.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been meaning to write this for years, but never quite got around to it. It was meant to be loosely based on the lyrics of the Christmas song 'Fairytale of New York'. Started out as a songfic, but then I remembered that those almost never work. Maybe be subject to edits as I'm jumping the gun a bit.


End file.
